“The mafia of two worlds”: 17 arrests between Palermo and New York – THE NAMES
The key man is an 81-year-old "godfather".
THE BLITZ
by Riccardo Lo Verso
NOVEMBER 8, 2023, 10:57 AM
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PALERMO – Rivers of money accumulated through drugs, sports betting and the import-export of agricultural products flowed along the Palermo-New York bridge . Not even the “Game Over” blitz of 2018 stopped relations between Sicilian and American mafiosi. Today the Palermo District Anti-Mafia Directorate is writing a new chapter . The investigations of the policemen of the Central Operational Service of Rome, of the Palermo flying squad and of the FBI reveal the names of those who managed the business, controlled the illicit trafficking and imposed the extortion money.
Seventeen people were arrested for criminal association, extortion, arson, conspiracy and auction rigging. Ten measures were carried out in New York, seven in Sicily. The investigation focuses on the mafia families of Partinico, Borgetto and Torretta. The latter was involved in the 1980s in the Pizza Connection investigation conducted by Giovanni Falcone which reconstructed the relationships between the mafias of the old and new continent.
It is the Gambinos who hold the strings in America, where the "heirs" of Frank Calì, murdered in 2019 in front of his home on Staten Island, move.
There was great excitement on the day of the crime. He spent some time before realizing that it was not a mafia murder, but the work of a thug. The victim had married Rosaria Inzerillo, sister of Pietro, one of those who escaped to America during the mafia war wanted by the Corleonesi. On January 14, 1982, a New Jersey police officer received an anonymous phone call. A voice told him to go to the Hilton hotel in Mount Laurel because there was a bomb in a car. And instead in the trunk they found the frozen body of Pietro Inzerillo, Frank Calì's brother-in-law.
The key man in Sicily would be Francesco Rappa, 81 , who was arrested in New York in the 1970s. Little money for protection money, but huge requests. In this the Americans accepted the advice of the Sicilians of Partinico. Bureau agents have uncovered dozens of extortion cases involving construction companies in the Big Apple. To collect the money and intimidate those who don't pay, the American bosses use the labor of local gangs.
The investigation is coordinated by the Palermo prosecutor Maurizio de Lucia, the deputy Marzia Sabella and the deputy Giovanni Antoci.
The names of those arrested in Palermo
Those arrested in Palermo are Francesco Rappa, born in Palermo (81 years old), Giacomo Palazzolo, born in Balestrate (77 years old), Giovan Battista Badalamenti, born in Torretta (69 years old), Salvatore Prestigiacomo, born in Palermo (50 years old), Isacco Urso, born in Verbania (40 years old), Salvatore Prestigiacomo, born in Palermo (54 years old) and Maria Caruso, born in Palermo (39 years old).
